There is pain in the eyes, but you see me smiling. It might have been the joke you said or it might have been a happy moment for you. You are happy and so was I. I smiled curving my lips, assuring that I am happy. Of course I am happy. Why wouldn’t I be happy? You give another hard look into my eyes, trying to leap inside the broken fragments of the soul, but you strike the doubt off the table with convincing smile I give you. I was happy or perhaps I have mastered the craft.

“What makes one happy?“, I sat down contemplating while I turned the pages of the novel that I was reading. I had covered a good fifty pages, only to realize that I was reading but my mind wasn’t here. It had been somewhere else, lost. The story on the book continued, the life around continued, but I was still stuck in the limbo, the limbo of the past. And when I look at the page under the bright fluorescent light , I still remember the last scene which happened fifty pages back or was it the memory that never fades.

I revisit the question when I saw the kid drowned in his game suddenly looks up and starts talking to me with a glow in his eyes. When he said he was a Tiger and I responded back that he wasn’t. His response was rebellious yet I saw the carefreeness, a sort of freedom and happiness. After all he was a kid and he put me in a trance of thought, while I was still figuring out the answer to the question “What makes one happy?” Perhaps, I was asking the wrong question. I know what makes one happy. I have been there. May be, the question should have been “Why am I not happy?”. I could give you a million reasons or one, and I still wouldn’t let you in. Because some pages are better left unturned, some stories are better left untold. Perhaps, happiness is keeping the demons inside and never letting them out.

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31 Comments

That is deep my friend! No sure shot answer to this question I guess, unless you are one who has achieved Nirvaana! Like you say, for us mere mortals, maybe we can keep the act of being in the state of happiness by not treading on deeper demons of insecurity, self-doubt, ignorance etc.

Deep is my kinda thing. 😛 I mean absurd senselessness. Ok, I don't know what Nirvana exactly is but no, I'm a long way from that.That's how I deal with the demons inside. The mere mortals are much better and are much happier in their trance of life. No demons for them.

Your post has just added few more crumbs to my already obese thoughts.. The answer to the question 'Why am I not happy?' is so simple, and yet we are grinding to the self-created complications. Weird, isn't it? Love the way you write 🙂

I hope the good crumbs.The realization of what makes one happy and the enactment are miles apart. Like I said, some of us are battling the unseen battles and not letting the demons out. And yes, its kind of weird, because we know it, yet we don't know it.

I have always wondered on what constitutes happiness. In the end, it's just a feeling which changes from people to people. There are so many who are happy just living a normal middle class 9-5 kind of life.

But then there are also those who have all the money in the world but are still not happy. While all of us should aim for the stars, we should also learn to be satisfied and smile once in a while. Being happy surely wouldn't trouble you or would it?

Happiness is a feeling, an entity that can not be defined or weighted. It changes from person to person, agreed. And one man's happiness is not others happiness. That's quite an alarming state to be in.

Happiness should be contagious, not a limited commodity. And I agree with your analogy of having everything and not having anything. Prepaid, it's about being happy in what we have and not what we want to have.

P.S. “Why, thank you” is basically a figure of speech usually told acknowledging a compliment that was quite unexpected. In other terms, “Thank you very much, I wasn’t quite expecting that”.
Sorry about that.

I guess a happy person is basically one who is satisfied in life. He/she is untroubled by the past and the future.
They are at peace with life and I guess that’s something that falls in two categories… One is of those people who are just complacent with what they have. I believe there’s nothing harmful about it but it just kills the spark.. the will to be or do better. The other is of those people who are happy and grateful and yet strive for betterment not only of themselves but of those around them too.

I guess the reason most people find it difficult to be happy(or to continue to be happy) could be because we all have expectations and desires and greed and moods. 😛
Am I making some sense?

I couldn’t agree more. A happy person is indeed someone who is satisfied in life. S/he has what they want, what the need and if it not enough, they are still happy, because it was all they ever needed.

Brilliantly said. Both points make perfect sense.
And yes, you are making sense as well. 🙂

Don’t think too much and you can be happy. A childlike acceptance of life is a better recipe for happiness than a deep, analytical, probing, questioning mind of an adult who can spend hours on wondering why he/she is not happy. Thinking about it doesn’t make you happy.

thank you for stopping by my blog. I dropped by and holy cow you have a lot to offer here. “Because some pages are better left unturned, some stories are better left untold. Perhaps, happiness is keeping the demons inside and never letting them out.” from a little’s perspective I can say that demons are scary and they don’t wish us to be happy. Letting one live inside if even in our memories cannot be ideal. You would have to own it and make it a slave and accept that it is a part of you. Thus the beast is born. the beast can be controlled and fed. What lives in the shaded shadows?